The famous Tik Tok application is still causing controversy in the United States of America. After it was banned in several regions, a more important new came.
A former employee of the platform warned the US Congress that the app “lies” about Chinese espionage.
The data of 100 million American users is at risk
He also exposed flaws in data security when he met with congressional investigators to share his concerns that the company’s protection plan in the US is “deeply flawed,” in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post.
Likewise, the most prominent evidence that could spark doubts from lawmakers in the application, pointing out that he worked 6 months in the company’s trust and safety department until early 2022.
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He added that the problems could leave the data of more than 100 million US users exposed to Chinese-based employees at the parent company’s headquarters.
In turn, the newspaper indicated that these allegations threaten to undermine the $ 1.5 billion restructuring plan, known as the Texas Project, which TikTok has widely promoted in Washington as a way to neutralize the risk of data theft or misuse by the Chinese government.
And she indicated that this could fuel speculation that the popular short video application is still vulnerable to distorting the algorithm for providing video recommendations and exploiting user data for advertising or espionage.
The former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said he told congressional investigators that the Texas project was not enough and that an arrangement truly leak-proofing Americans’ data would require a “total re-engineering” of how TikTok operates.
Among the evidence provided by the employee, he says, is that TikTok can connect to systems linked to Toutiao, a popular Chinese news app run by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.
He pointed out that this connection could allow surreptitious interference with the flow of American data.
The application warns of an inevitable collision between China and America
misinterpret?!
It is noteworthy that the supervisors of “Tik Tok” have been negotiating since 2019, with a group of federal officials, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, about the privacy standards and technical guarantees that they need to adopt to meet US national security concerns.
The company finalized its proposal in August and submitted it to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
While it has not been approved yet, without revealing the reasons for rejection.
In addition, the interview of the former employee of “Tik Tok” was published, coinciding with a Belgian decision to ban employees of the Belgian federal government from using the Tik Tok application on their work phones.
On the other hand, TikTok said that the former employee had misinterpreted the plan, stressing that his claim about “Tutiao” was unfounded.
